Great Throughts Treasury

"You have to have a lot of patience to learn patience." - Stanislaw Lec, fully Stanisław Jerzy Lec, born Baron Stanisław Jerzy de Tusch-Letz

"Oh, give me vision to discern the child behind whatever he may do or say, the wise humility to learn from him the while I strive to teach him day by day." - Adelaide Love

"Today, and every day, deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do." - Og Mandino

"Complacency is the enemy. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency. Our attitude towards ourselves should be “insatiable in learning” and towards others to be “tireless in teaching.”" - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

"We can learn from experience if we are ready to adapt that experience to changed conditions." - J. C. Masterman, fully Sir John Cecil Masterman

"He who studies the Torah in order to learn and to do God’s will acquire many merits; and not only that, but the whole world is indebted to him. He is cherished as a friend, a lover of God and of his fellow man." - Mishnah or The Mishnah NULL

"What I have learned bears no other fruit than to make me realize how much I still have to learn." -

"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?" - Mary Manin Morrissey

"We can only learn to love by loving." - Iris Murdoch, aka Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

"Children seem to learn to talk by inventing their own words and rules: by experimenting with language. Children make statements to adults and then wait for adults to put the statements into adult language so they can make a comparison… If the adult says nothing or simply continues the conversation, the child assumes his or her utterance is correct. When adults “correct” – that is, expand in adult language what the children have said – they are providing feedback. The adult and the child are actually speaking different languages, but they understand the situation, the child can compare their different ways of saying the same thing." - Judith M. Newman

"Man is unique in that he knows nothing. He can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, in fact he can do nothing by natural instinct alone except weep." -

"You learn something the day you die. Learn how to die." - Katherine Anne Porter, born Callie Russell Porter

"To learn the whole Talmud is a great accomplishment; to learn one good virtue is even greater." - Yiddish Proverbs

"Learning to learn is to know how to navigate in a forest of facts, ideas and theories, a proliferation of constantly changing items of knowledge. Learning to learn is to know what to ignore but at the same time not rejecting innovation and research." - Raymond Queneau

"We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement." - Rosemary Radford Ruether

"We learn by going where we have to go." - Theodore Roethke

"The Taoist solution was to get oneself in harmony with the Way or Tao of the universe, to learn to move through the world with flexibility and fluidity according to the nature of things, rather than fighting it, ourselves, or other people." - Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin

"Important rules to watch in living. Keep life simple. Avoid watching for the knock in your motor. Learn to like work. Have a good hobby. Learn to be satisfied. Like people, say cheerful pleasant things. Turn the defeat of adversity into victory. Met your problems with decision. Make the present moment a success. Always be planning something. Say “nuts” to irritations." - John A. Schindler

"We learn by thinking and the quality of the learning outcome is determined by the quality of our thoughts." - Ronald R. Schmeck, fully Ronald Ray Schmeck

"We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart." - Walter Scott, fully Sir Walter Scott,1st Baronet

"Each one must learn for himself the highest wisdom. It cannot be taught in words… Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams." - Smohalla (Dreamer), also Smowholla, Shmoqula or Smuxale NULL

"Words are things. Thoughts are things. Where your thoughts are, you are. When we learn to discipline and control our thoughts and feelings, and use only the positive, constructive words, sent forth with divine love, our body and mind respond to that righteousness – right-use-ness. The right use and selection of words is of vital importance but equally important is the feeling behind those words, for feeling is the motivating power that makes the words live." - Baird T. Spalding

"Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life." - Muriel Spark, fully Dame Muriel Sarah Camberg Spark

"Maybe you are here on earth to learn that life is what you make it, and it’s to be enjoyed." - Dick Sutphen

"It is a good thing to learn caution by the misfortunes of others." -

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all." -

"It is important to acknowledge a mistake instantly, correct it, and learn from it. That literally turns a failure into a success. Success is on the far side of failure." - Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

"Fret not over bygones and the forward journey take. Only a short distance have I gone astray, and I know today I am right, if yesterday was a complete mistake… Ah, homeward bound I go! Let me from now on learn to live alone! The world and I are not made for one another, and why drive round like one looking for what he has not found?" -

"If you learn to see God in all things you will learn to love them according to His will, not your own self-will. If you see things as in eternity you are less a prey to the pain of their passing, and so you can learn the more easily not to clutch at them as they pass." - Gerald Vann

"Happy is he who has been able to learn the causes of things." -

"To find God is but the beginning of wisdom, because then for all our days we have to learn his purpose with us and to live our lives with him." -

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." -

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live." -

"We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn." - Mary Catherine Bateson

"All learning involves trying something and seeing what happens. If one will not try anything until he is assured that he will not make a mistake in whatever he does, he will never be able to learn anything new at all." - David Bohm, fully David Joseph Bohm

"The most human thing we have to do in life is is to learn to speak our honest convictions and feelings and live with the consequences. This is the first requirement of love, and it makes us vulnerable to other people who may ridicule us. But our vulnerability is the only thing we can give to other people." -

"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live." -

"You have a choice in how you respond to life. You can learn to relate to your thinking as well as your circumstances in new ways. With practice, making these choices will translate into a more relaxed self." - Richard Carlson

"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." - Albert Einstein

"When children experience violence, or observe violence against their mothers, they learn it's acceptable--even moral--to use force to impose one's will on others. Indeed, the only way they can make sense of violence coming from those who are supposed to love them is that it must be moral." - Riane Eisler, fully Riane Tennenhaus Eisler

"Why not learn by getting down to the actual practice?" -

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you'll learn at how precious it is." - Maxim Gorky, pen name of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov

"We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

"Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"If children live with honesty and fairness, they learn what truth and justice are." -

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." -

"Once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know." - Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn ... and change." - Carl Ransom Rogers

"Philosophy may help to cleanse our thinking, but only in experience itself, in stumbling through life and reflecting about our moments of joy and despair, can we learn how to live." - Irving Singer

"To see what students learn in school, look at how they leave school. If they leave thinking that reading and writing are difficult and pointless, that mathematics is confusing, that history is irrelevant, and that art is a bore, then that is what they have been taught. People learn what is demonstrated to them, and this reality will not change to suit the convenience of politicians and educations administrators." - Frank Smith